School of Social and Political Science

Description

In China, heritage projects are sprouting across the countryside carrying the promise of Xi Jinping’s “Chinese dream” as a call for the great revival and rejuvenation of the nation. The Invention of Tradition: Story of a Village and a Nation Remade unravels the workings behind these promises through the story of remaking Meili, a Dong ethnic minority village nestled along the margins of China, into a “Traditional Village” heritage site. In a past driven by deep political and societal disruptions, Meili becomes a medium for contesting, mediating and continuously inventing representations of tradition that aligns with the Chinese Communist Party’s mission towards continuity and stability. The outcome is an original depiction of the compromises that shape heritage-making in a rural ethnic corner of China. Filled with rich, fine-grained narrative and analysis, Suvi Rautio offers a unique lens to the politics of inventing tradition and its far-reaching consequences in steering China's national identity under Xi Jinping rule.

Speaker: Dr Suvi Rautio, The University of Helsinki

Chair: Dr Jingyu Mao, The University of Edinburgh

Bio of the Speaker: Suvi Rautio is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki. Trained as a social and cultural anthropologist specialising on China, her academic interests cover a range of fields that help her unpack the historical and social orderings of marginalised populations living in China. She has conducted fieldwork in rural Guizhou on heritage, in Guangzhou with African dancers studying the growing Popular African dance trend (feizhou wu), and more recently in Beijing collecting oral histories with members of the intellectual class during the Maoist era. Alongside her writing and research, she is the editor-in-chief of Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society and an active podcast host for New Books Network Chinese studies.

Bio of the Chair: Jingyu Mao is a Lecturer in Sociology at Edinburgh University. Her research focuses on emotion, work and migration, ethnicity and gender, rural-urban division, intimacy, and personal life. Her work has been published in journals such as Emotions and Society, The China Quarterly, China Perspectives, Families, Relationships, and Societies, and Global Social Policy. She is the author of Intimacy as a Lens on Work and Migration (Bristol University Press).

Location: Seminar Room 1, Chrystal MacMillan Building, the University of Edinburgh

This event is a hybrid one.

Join Zoom Meeting: https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/86789720724

Meeting ID: 867 8972 0724

Passcode: 3XPwxL9J